Sam Martorana, who was behind the ovens at Casa Bianca for more than 50 years, was such a presence at the red-checked-tablecloth pizzeria that it was hard to imagine it continuing after he passed away. His pizza was idiosyncratic to an extreme: thin when the fashion was for puffy crusts; judiciously topped in an era marked by bubbling excess; and sliced into the odd parallelograms characteristic of bar pies from the South Side of Chicago, which is where he learned to cook. The mushrooms were always canned — fresh mushrooms dry out in the oven's extreme heat — and Martorana kept pineapple-topped Hawaiian pizza on the menu... More >>>